


Frost Bite

by RedglareVantas (xanemarths)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Asexuality, Bisexuality, Gender-Neutral Hange Zoë, Homosexuality, I'm taking artistic license here, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, It has everything I ever wanted, Jotun AU, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Multi, Platonic Romance, Polyamory, This AU is very near and dear to my heart, aro ace Eren, because I want to, too many tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:46:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2261589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xanemarths/pseuds/RedglareVantas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco Bodt always knew that he was, in the eyes of their society, some sort of abomination. When he is almost discovered one night, he decides to run to the north, rather than stay and face persecution and death.</p>
<p>To the north lay Jotunheim, land of the frost giants, who had long antagonized those in the walls. Though trained to fight and kill them, though told legends of how they ate humans, it's his only chance of survival.</p>
<p>But things are not always how they seem, and perhaps it is a life beyond the walls that he needs. Freedom, and someone to show him that the walls were not the only restrictive things in his life before... Perspective puts quite a spin on things, doesn't it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Laughs because this is the second fic I'm posting today, and they're both multi-chapter fanfics. And I have even more ideas for other fanfics that are also in progress and need finalizing. But what do I do? I post Jotun AU.
> 
> Jotun AU is actually one of my oldest SNK ideas? I only had a few others before this one. And plotting out all the lore was quite fun, too! I hope to explain most of it at some point in the fanfic, but we'll see how that goes...
> 
> The main purpose of this fanfic was actually Ymir and Marco BroTP I'm not gonna lie. Ymir and Marco freckled friendship is my lifeblood. There's a ton of self indulgent shipping too though so I hope you don't mind that.
> 
> Without much further ado, I present one of my earliest and dearest AUs, Frost Bite.

Run. That was all he knew, that was all he could do right now. Escape the gates while they were preoccupied elsewhere, with the ceremonies for all who had reached his age.

The walls were said to have been built by God, long ago. They protected those within from all enemies, but they had been commanded to expand still further. For each new land conquered, a wall was added. That had been a century ago, and there were three walls now. And despite it having been ninety years since the last one was built, there hadn’t been another one since.

Of course, the Church decided to take over. With the expansion halted, they declared that something within the walls had offended God, and they would permanently eradicate whatever it was. From then on, a mass witch hunt began. Only there were too few with magic there, and someone else needed the blame.

They said it was simply because God had commanded it, but no matter what the reason, laws came into action. Couples of the same sex were forbidden. The idea of gender binary became enforced. Those couples who were infertile in any way were separated, burned, tortured. And a new policy began, one that encouraged sexual activity to produce new children, to strengthen the army and increase its size, now that those who prevented that were dead.

For him, it was a death sentence. From an early age, Marco Bodt had no interest in females. Sure, they made wonderful friends. Sure, he got along with them just as well as he did with everyone. But when he thought of kisses, of someone he wanted to spend his life with…

All the figures were male.

And yet that was such a sin. He knew it, had known since he was five, before he even began to picture a lover. He was an abomination, a sin against nature by his very own choices, and something that had to be corrected. He had tried so hard, though everything imaginable, explored-

That was where he learned his other problem. Even when dreaming of males, even when he pushed himself to think of it…

All he ever wanted was kisses, and cuddles, and someone who loved him in spite of how his hair never seemed to part perfectly, and how his freckles stood out all over his skin, and how he was too tall and broad yet so gentle, and how _he was a fucking abomination that could only fall for a man-_

He had joined the Military training program when he was young. It wasn't really an unusual choice; hell, anyone would have been proud to see their child fighting for the walls! Maybe it was, in a way, to atone for his great sin - maybe, he thought, if he could just serve the king, and serve him well, he'd be forgiven...

In spite of his dreams, he never would have believed that he would be the one to fill out the top ten, the elite who alone were able to fill the position of Military Police. He always was too slow, was too much of a dead weight. But they told him he topped the class in teamwork, and his foresight and battle planning was very much appreciated. He would have been a good asset.  
But of course, the night came where trainees were supposed to find a partner, go on a date, dance; a ball, of sorts. A night for them to figure out a potential future lover. And those who could not find a partner were paired with one at random.

The girl was nice, and obviously pretty. In other circumstances, he could have loved her. But he was a fuckup, someone who wasn't supposed to exist, and his eyes lingered far too long at the face of the man he would have brought, if he could-

It was summer, and the chill in the air that day was unnatural. Many whispered of past Jotun attacks, told of how they froze the air around them, crushed the gates using ice-

The gates were breached, but not by any Jotun. Magic workers and rogues broke in, fought, killed. The people were evacuated, and the soldiers fought and became the only casualties. The city slowly recovered, patched the opening, drove the attackers out. It would have been a normal, ordinary day. Until Marco saw a man caught off guard, about to be cornered, after they had ordered a retreat from that section.

If it had been anyone else, he wouldn't have seen red, launched himself furiously to grab the man and get him out of there. He would not have disobeyed orders for a man with hardly a chance to be saved, if it hadn't been _him_.

And as Marco covered the man back, he saw it in the face of his commander. His days were numbered.

The city had long been cleared of the attackers when he returned. There was a man he had known in training camp, who had looked almost the same, but for his perfect skin. A blessing from God to one clearly not cursed and wicked. He hadn't returned, was presumed dead, and now Marco saw what had killed him. Half his face and his arm had been cut off with the raiders' enchanted swords. They were still such a close match, and so many of the dead had been taken entirely by raiders. If he could make this one appear to be his own body, he would be fine.  
He had to work quickly, before anyone caught him out past curfew, or saw him at all - smudge the side of the face remaining, so that no one could tell it had no damning freckles. The man's shirt was different, too, he realized; it didn't have a collar on it. Acting as fast as he could, Marco stripped off his shirt, tore it in just the right way, soaked it in blood and replaced the other shirt with his. Then, pulling on the bloodstained t-shirt himself, he ran for it.

The purpose of the walls were always to keep people out, and not to keep them in. While Jotuns or robbers or anything of the sort entering a city was a problem, it was far easier for them to drive them out then often expected. Hell, he knew children who had played outside the walls when he had been younger, and had never once been caught. He knew all the ways to escape where even the most alert guard couldn't see him leave.

It was a drastic measure, but at least he'd have no witch hunt after him. His death, assumed to be in the line of duty, would be considered noble. A single glance, acting against orders to save a comrade, could all be excused.

The walls had a border of forest just to the north, and when he had reached sufficient tree cover, he discarded the military jacket, boots, belts, anything that could betray him as a former trainee. He only had one direction to head in, straight to the north, towards Jotunheim, and he knew the legends all too well. Ymir did not take kindly to strangers in her lands. And with someone who was used as a threat to misbehaving children (stop that, or Ymir will come to steal you away and eat you up!), he would be best off if he pretended to be an ordinary, lost person, rather than a military threat.

He barely traveled a mile when the frostline began. Though only the stronghold had permanent tundra of any kind surrounding it, the ground quickly grew colder and colder, until his bare feet crunched against snow. He gasped quietly in shock as his feet grew colder, finally growing numb, but pressed on anyway. Even in the middle of summer, Jotunheim was cold, frosty, forbidding; it was the ice giants alone that prevented the walls from expanding. They could control magic, freeze everything with a single touch, and were almost invincible. And when Ymir became their new queen seventy years ago, with her magic and command and fighting ability, the battle had turned almost utterly against the wallists. 

He hardly slept those next few days. Sleep meant that he could easily freeze to death from the cold, with his conditions. Without decent clothing, he wouldn't make it far, but a ripped shirt and pants were all he had. Besides, he couldn't afford a fire. That would tell any Jotuns exactly where he was, so they could eat him. 

With no traps, no weapons, no way to catch his own food, he resorted to eating only the from the few edible plants somehow, miraculously, still growing in spite of the freezing conditions eternally present here. What would it be like when there was snow even inside the walls, where it only grew cold in the deepest winters? Too cold, he imagined, for anyone other than a Jotun to survive. Yet even in such a barren and desolate place, he saw few hares pass by him, and deer, and in the distance he would hear a lone wolf cry - though never did he encounter a giant. Not even it the distance could he see a rising head, never once did he pass a strange boulder that suddenly reached out to grab him. The Jotuns that inhabited the land, that had been so feared and rumored, were nowhere to be found.

Had he not seen them before, he would almost have believed that they simply didn't exist.

By the third day, his feet, face, exposed arm, everything felt numb from cold. His feet were bloodied and raw from walking so far over rocks and rough ground without shoes, and even his hands and knees hadn't escaped that fate; every time he fell, they always seemed to find the most painful places to land. His stomach was almost empty, but he hadn't seen a nut or berry in the last mile, nor could he see any prey animals. Beyond that, he was utterly exhausted, thirsty, and without any way to improve his condition. Once again, he found himself falling to his knees.

He was just about to collapse entirely when he heard it.

A low grunting sound, one he hadn't heard before, from an animal he had never seen back in the walls. But it looked close enough to a deer, if a bit bigger, and much darker. Black and white fur, and huge, sprawling antlers atop its head. It approached Marco with only a certain degree of caution, lowering its head down to his level and giving a low groaning sound. Its huge green eyes blinked at him, and there was something... almost human in its gaze. Partially in awe, partially in his delirious state, he reached out, touching the creature between the antlers, rubbing nearly frozen fingers through its fur, so soft and warm as it was. The animal, whatever it was, stayed there, allowing it for a moment, though it seemed just slightly more nervous than before.

He only saw the bear later, when he heard the fierce growl, and he pulled back- he wasn't competition; he wouldn't eat this strange deer. If that's what the bear was after, anyway.

The deer creature pulled his head away from Marco's hand, tilting its head in the direction of the growl before shaking it. Ice crystals flew from its antlers, and Marco covered his face against them. Another groaning noise, followed by a louder, angrier growl from the bear. He realized now how huge it was - heavyset, muscular, large. One of the biggest bears he had ever seen - and golden, too. A rare color for a bear.

He was so preoccupied with the bear that he didn't notice at first when the deer changed. All he knew was that he felt something like steam, and when he turned back, it was a man blinking at him. Much taller than him (which said something, for Marco had always been the tallest in his class), with the same black hair and green eyes of the deer. Looking up at him now, he seemed almost the same age - eighteen at least, maybe - yet those eyes betrayed him as someone much older, who had seen far more winters than it appeared. There was a light dusting of frost in his hair, and though it was well below freezing, he seemed unbothered by cold in only a blue-gray shirt and pants made from some animal's fur.  
A Jotun.

Marco knew they had animal forms, and human forms, but he still hadn't prepared for this. Or for the Jotun man to crouch in front of him. "How long have you been out here?"

He seemed so nervous on speaking, casting glances over at the bear - or, where he was, because when Marco looked next, it was another man, blonde, also tall and muscular. He wondered if every animal he had seen before was really a Jotun in disguise. This man seemed angrier at the moment, staring down at Marco with arms folded, but every time the first Jotun looked at him, he would soften and nod encouragingly. His eyes darted between them, unable to answer, unable to even speak. “Look, all the blood on his shirt isn’t his, and even if it were, he’s human, and on our territory, and rapidly nearing Utgard at that.”

There was a moment of silence, a sigh, and again. “How long have you been traveling?”

“Three days,” Marco admitted, looking down at his lap, hands gripping tightly on his pants. Three days of utter hell, filled with terror and hunger and cold. Three days of worrying what had happened back home...

Even though he hardly looked back up, he could feel the glances between them. With every glance, he almost heard something, as though he was thinking to himself. Yet it was their voices that he heard, muffled as it was to his ears. Through the noise like static, he managed to catch only two words clearly. "Jotun", they said, in passing. "Ymir."

Finally, the blond man emerged from the trees with a heaving sigh. Like his companion, his pants were also of some fur, belted in a rather odd fashion, but his furs were white rather than brown. With relative ease, he scooped Marco into his arms and gestured for his companion to turn around. "Fine. But you carry him."

It was a rather odd sight, watching a Jotun break out into a sweat, but that's what appeared to be happening for the taller man. "You're stronger!"

"Yeah, but you're taller, and warmer, too. This guy's just shorter than I am, and he's half frozen. Can't believe he made it this far, and he won't make it to Utgard if he stays cold."

There was a measure of reluctance in the man as he turned around, and Marco felt himself lifted until he could cling onto the man's back. He flinched away with a gasp as his body touched the Jotun; he had expected the numbing iciness of snow, not an almost burning, radiating heat! Perhaps that was why the Jotun could sweat so much, freezing cold as the surrounding environment was. For a moment, it was too much - the transition from nearly numb with cold to touching something so warm was quite a shock. Then it faded away, and Marco found himself with his face buried against the scratchy woolen shirt, trying to take advantage of the warmth emanating through it.

Surprisingly, the blond Jotun didn't seem in too much of a hurry to move forward. He walked to a tree, pulling out a crumpled paper and a pen, scribbling something down before rolling it up and tying it together. He gave a low whistle, and a bird of prey - possibly a hawk, or a falcon, with a large beak and pale yellow feathers swooped down onto his outstretched arm. "There you are, Annie - I know you don't like being the messenger, but you're faster than any of us - yes, it is about the man you saw, and this needs to reach Ymir before we do. No, we don't need to kill him yet. With luck, we won't need to."

Marco gave a quiet groan at the exchange, wondering how they could so casually talk about killing him in his presence. Was the bird another Jotun? With his luck, probably. The bird grabbed the paper in its beak, before leaping off and returning to the air, indeed moving at incredible speed. Once he seemed sure the hawk was on its way, the blond Jotun nodded, returned to the side of his companion, and looked at them both. "Right. We should head back, now. Hopefully we'll get in before nightfall, because I don't he'll last past then."

With those grim words, they set off, jogging in almost a straight line towards the north, following the path of the hawk. Despite being slower than the bird, they still moved with incredible speed and stamina, passing over those miles as if they were nothing. The trees and bushes faded away, suddenly leaving a harsh and empty tundra. In the distance, a single, ruined tower rose above the horizon, taller than the surrounding outcrops of rock and ice, and threatening in appearance. Still, it appeared long abandoned and in ruins, without a trace of smoke from a fireplace or any activity around it. Beside him, as if noticing hos confusion, the blond Jotun smiled. "It only looks like a single, abandoned tower. Keeps out unwanted guests, like your wallist soldiers. Makes them think it's easy to capture."

He chuckled, looking back to the front. "Not that anyone has ever made it this far."

There was a sick, jolting feeling in the pit of Marco's stomach, and he buried his face back against the tall Jotun's shoulder to quell it. When he glanced back up, they were almost directly in front of the castle, and both Jotuns were slowing to a halt. Gazing up, Marco found that the one had been correct. The tower he had seen before looked pristine, strong, no longer as though it would fall on slight provocation and as though it was abandoned. And it was no longer the only tower, nor the only building. A giant building stood there, connecting all the towers, large enough that even a fully transformed Jotun could stand comfortably inside. It was covered with frost, too, and banners displaying several crests. A bear, and the odd looking deer, and a bird of prey intertwined with some great beast, and a fox, and some weasel like creature, and, to his surprise, the royal crest of the walls!

But one crest repeated itself, hung between all the rest, carved into the walls, in the patterns of the ice. The wolf.

Ymir's crest.

"Can I put him down now? My back hurts..." This jolted Marco back to the present, staring at the Jotun carrying him. "Why not? He walked this far, and he should be rested and warm by now. A little further can't hurt."

In all truth, Marco agreed with this sentiment. Yes, he could get to the castle just fine. He might have felt safer with the Jotun, but...

"All right. Off we go then. Hupp!"

He was quickly lifted and set back down, bare feet touching a path laid out in the snow. He shuffled a moment, looking up at the castle, wondering what would happen to him inside.

He took his first step.

And promptly keeled over.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco may or may not now be in safe hands, but there's one thing he knows for sure: Those hands are very, very infamous.
> 
> There are also secrets left to be uncovered about himself, and of the castle of Utgard itself - things that he could not have dreamed of inside the walls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize it's about a month since I updated, and I'm sorry about that! I really, _really_ wanted this out quicker, but I got sidetracked on writing and READING a whole lot of other stuff, and it got... delayed. If I can, next chapter will be out sooner, though I guess it all depends on length and focus.  
>  Also I have hardly ever written for Ymir and never for Sasha and I really hope I didn't butcher that entirely.

He woke to cold air, flickering lights, and a freckled face.

For a moment, his reaction was confusion - he remembered falling face first into frozen snow, not the warm softness of a bed and mattress. Had he dreamed it all? The attack, the running, the Jotuns, Utgard? Was he back in the barracks, about to face another day of fear for his life?

His hands grasped at the covers, trying to pull them further up, and found fur instead of cotton sheets. It was then that Marco sat up, gasping slightly in pain at the effort, and it was then that his brain fully comprehended the presence of the woman.

"Oy," she said, and that was her greeting as he rubbed at his bleary eyes still weary and only half awake. "Take it easy on yourself. You've been out an entire day, and we nearly lost you twice. You're a lucky little fucker, to have gotten this far."

He blinked once, twice more, before ready to take in appearances. She was tall, and broad shouldered like he was, but pointy and almost vaguely hostile. Just like him, her skin was darker, and freckled, but her skin was a shade darker than his, and her hair, pulled back into a messy ponytail, was a much lighter brown than his own. Lying vertically under her eyes were her frost lines, the icy white patterns which differentiated Jotuns from ordinary humans. She wore some dark gray tunic, belted at the waist while it extended almost to her knees, and even though they were inside, she still wore thick, fitted boots. Her eyes were gold, and though she looked to him no older than eighteen, he could see in her eyes that, just as with the tall Jotun, she was far older than her appearances betrayed.

Perhaps even older than that Jotun.

She leaned back in her chair, scratching idly behind her ears, legs long crossed. "Of course, I guess your heritage helped. No way a normal human could have survived in the north in - what? Half a t-shirt and pants? Nah. You'd have frozen the first night. By the way, I hope you noticed I took the liberty of replacing that shit.

Marco hadn't, his brain far too occupied with processing the surroundings. Looking down now, though, he found that she was right - the t-shirt was gone, with a light green sweater in its place. It was clearly made for someone at least another size larger than he was, and his head tilted at her, while his fingers played idly with the sleeve ends. “It’s Reiner’s,” she informed him, as though that made everything clear. “The big blond guy who carried you in. We didn’t have anything closer to your size that wasn’t too small.”

It still felt a bit too big, especially around the chest, and Marco would have bet all the money he had earned previously in the army that the woman sitting here had clothes that would fit him perfectly. Whatever the reason, though, she had chosen to not give him anything, and he was left with something far bigger than he was used to. Not that it mattered, he decided, lifting the collar to his face to bury his nose in it. Anything was better than what he had before. "Thank you,", he murmured, before finally lifting his face to give her a faint smile. "It's nice."

She snorted at him, rolling her eyes. "It'd better be. Those two didn't bring you all the way to me for nothing. Like I said, your heritage helped, but you still almost died on us. Of course. All the way up here and your frost lines haven't even set in, you must be really weak and untrained, even Connie-"

"Heritage?" Marco broke in, head starting to spin again. _Frost lines?_ Weren't those... The woman seemed exasperated now, frustrated. "Of fucking course. You don't know, do you? That's why. You were just left in complete blissful ignorance, probably to keep you 'safe' and to stop you from 'wondering' about things. Well, let me explain you a thing: you're a fucking Jotun. Welcome home, buddy, why don't we break out the ale?"

" _Jotun?_ " he asked, voice pitching high at the end of his question. If his head spun any more, Marco felt he would pass out again. She nodded. "Yeah. Do you think you'd have survived the freezing if you weren't already born of snow and ice?"

He couldn't answer, voice stuck in his throat. Jotuns were the bad guys. Jotuns were the people eaters, the heathens who stopped the advancement of the walls. The magicians, the frost people, the ice giants, the shifters. The thing he had been taught were evil, were abominable so long before.

He was apparently even more reprehensible than previously thought.

Maybe whoever the woman was noticed, because she threw up her hands and shook her head. "Hey, now," she said, raising an eyebrow, "Dunno what sort of shit had you running from those lunatics to the south, but you can't say we didn't at least take you in and care for you. Which is a step above what they could say for themselves."

Marco couldn't quite manage to tell her that they had only spared him, as far as he knew, for being a Jotun. Even if he could have summoned the courage in the few brief moments he had, she cut in too quickly for him to speak. "The name's Ymir, by the way. Yes, that Ymir. Child devourer, icy scourge, queen of all Jotuns, the fucking dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen. That's me."

Blink. Half of this was lost on him, because - her? Jotun queen? She seemed too uncouth, rude and free speaking and relaxed. There was no aura of authority around her that stifled and smothered him, nor any of the cold, brutal hostility he expected. Beneath her rudeness and lack of tact, he felt something warm, something pulsating with desire to protect and help all under her care, and it was an aura he knew and felt all too well. A similar wavelength, despite the outer differences in apparent personality. And Marco realized then that this had endeared the Jotun queen to him, this feeling, this realization that they could be so similar under the surface and in spite of their different histories. Something made him trust her, no matter how rash and irrational it would have seemed only days ago.

"Marco. Marco Bodt," he told her, outstretching his hand for her to shake, wondering only a moment too late if Jotun customs were different, and if this was a foreign gesture. Ymir looked at the hand, and back at him, features twisting into an uncertain frown, before she took the hand. "Ah, hell. Krista says I need to get better with 'social interaction' and that 'punching people is not a proper greeting'."

Whoever this Krista was, they seemed to be on very good terms with the Jotun queen, probably even best friends, at the apparent relaxed attitude between them, and Marco could not help but to giggle at the thought. Ymir scowled, rolling her eyes at him before leaning back again, nearly to falling level. Her hands clasped behind her head, and that was that. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I have to say," she admitted, rocking forward on that poor chair, bringing her hands beneath her chin as piercing gold eyes swept intently over him, "Bodt's not a name I'm familiar with in any lineage. Not even the far south ones that sometimes interact with humans and shit. I'm gonna guess that neither of those are your real names, and that they're just something to serve as a cover-up of your identity. Even from you."

Her golden gaze was steady, mesmerizing as Marco held it. All those years, all that wisdom... "Why?" He asked, voice quivering slightly. "Why keep it secret? Why rename me? How do you know this isn't my name...?"

There was a deep sigh from Ymir as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "By the gods, I thought I'd have you eating already. Not discussing Jotun lineage shit. All right," she said, waving her hand and idly tapping her foot, "you know the whole God of the walls? Well, the big man there isn't really the only one worshipped in the world. Most of the rest of us are normal and have a whole fuckton, though. Hell, my name came from the very first of us - he was some dude, but that shit don't matter. Point is, you aren't named after any of _our_ gods. Not to say we name every kid after a god, but - we don't cross with other gods, either. It's sometimes considered rude."

She broke for a moment, settling into silence while this information sank in. "You're named after a god even further south than the walls. Marco - messenger of Mars. God of war. But not OUR war god. It's the perfect disguise, really - a name that couldn't be any more southern, with even the protection of a god not our own. No one would even guess. If anything, they'd think any prowess in battle was because of that."

He stared for a moment, frowning. "So, I'm not really Marco?" He asked, suddenly and strangely nameless. It felt wrong, like the name before was part of him, was him, somehow, moreso than whatever his real name could possibly be. The Jotun queen threw up her hands in despair. "Look, kid. You've been Marco for how long? Sixteen, seventeen years?"

"Eighteen, three days ago," he confessed, quietly. She nodded emphatically. "Eighteen years. You've known that name your whole life. We don't know if you really even have another name, or if you were just born Marco. As far as I'm concerned, that's your name."

It was a strange relief, Marco found, as his own name returned to him, and his eyes softened at her as he smiled. He was not prepared for the sudden heavy hand clapping his back, and he jumped, head spinning. "Your head hurts," Ymir whispered as she leaned in close to his ear, "because you didn't eat. Come on. Let's get you to dinner. Hopefully this time you won't collapse when you think you can stand. Carrying you ain’t high in my priorities list."

\--

He did indeed make it to dinner on his own, without assistance from Ymir apart from directions and guidance. The room they entered was quite large, stretching up to the highest ceiling, an impressive twenty-one meters. It was ringed with balconies, at least one on every floor above it, overlooking the room. The only entrance was placed in a corner, on the same wall as the roaring fireplace, which somehow kept the entire room brightly lit and warm. The only other doors, Ymir informed him, connected directly to the kitchens, and by passage to her chambers. At the far end, sheltered under one of the balconies and raised slightly from the floor was the ice throne - the legendary seat of Ymir, crafted carefully from a single block of ice, frozen sharp and cruel and never melting even a drop.

It was a magnificent sight to take in, and perhaps he would have lingered longer there, drinking it in and observing. But something far more relevant to his current interests than the castle’s interior caught his eye, and if anything, stopped him dead in his tracks far sooner than any adornment had.

“There’s _so much food_ ,” he breathed, chocolate eyes wide as he gazed across the single table, stretching across the center of the room. “Is there some sort of feast today?”

Ymir hesitated, frowning at him. “This is enough for all of us, with enough left over for lunch. It’s not that huge of a feast- hell, feasts last for _days_ , here. Take what you want from it, but not too much. If you throw up on my floor I’ll kick you back out into the snow. And don’t worry about the meat. Unlike your propaganda might say, we don’t cook up humans.”

Marco wanted to tell her that he hadn’t even thought about that, or remembered - Jotuns had been known to swallow people whole in ice giant form, which led to the belief that they cooked and ate humans just as any other meat. Even so, he could still distinguish a chicken from a human, and he quickly loaded his plate, eyes still wide at the sheer _amount_ of food laid before him on the table. For a while, the Jotun Queen stood, silent, before wrinkling her nose in disgust as he started to dig in. “I have to wonder,” she murmur, voice dripping with loathing, “how the Wallists ever think they can win when they do not even give their _soldiers_ proper food.”

At that, Marco tore his gaze from his mouthful, blinking in confusion and trying to swallow. “What? And how did you know I was a soldier?”

Ymir finally plopped down on the bench beside him, drawing up her own heavily loaded plate. “I've got eyes everywhere, kid. Annie's been watching you since day one." With that, she nodded in the direction of a small, particularly icy looking Jotun lady. For a second her gaze turned to meet with Marco's, ice blue eyes scanning his face. He recognized something familiar in the cream color of her hair, in the large curve of her nose, and faintly he remembered Reiner addressing the bird from before as Annie, and how Jotuns could shift into animal form. "We were just waiting for a good time to step in. If we picked you up straight off the bat, you'd probably have put up a fight."

Though he was glad for an explanation, Marco couldn't help but feel a little put off by her words. "So you were letting me starve, and wander, and hurt myself?"

Ymir's gold gaze flicked over to meet his, and she shrugged. "Didn't expect it to take so long. I thought you'd be ready to collapse first night, we'd step in, and bam. You'd be back here and fed. But you were a Jotun, and even in your weak, untrained state, you had some measure of endurance. We wouldn't have just let you die, human or not. It was just a measure of 'how long will it take for him to accept our help' type of deal."

He stared for a while as she started scarfing down food again, still not fully pleased with her explanation. "I wouldn't have refused help, though. At any time."

She scoffed, shoved in one last mouthful, and turned to him, raising an eyebrow. "You're a rare kid, then, Marco. Most wouldn't."

With that, her focus returned to her plate, and he let his gaze wander as he ate. Annie had long since returned to her food, and he could see Reiner and the other, taller Jotun on the same bench as her. Reiner was laughing, loud and boisterous, at some story he had been sharing with them. The tall Jotun was shifting in his seat, uncertain, while Annie seemed to ignore the duo entirely, in favor of keeping her fingers intertwined with a golden haired man sitting across from her. His hair was long, and held back in a ponytail, and his sky blue eyes were partially hidden behind glasses. His thumb rubbed idly over Annie's hand as he put forth a comment of his own, and Marco slowly realized that he didn't the same lines of frost upon his face as did all Jotuns.

On further examination, he was found to not be the only one. The girl next to him with short black hair and a blood red scarf, the short, bitter looking older man and his enthusiastic companion who was babbling on to him about something while he nodded thoughtfully, the girl who seemed to be ready to devour half the table. Besides Ymir, and the trio from earlier, the only other ones in the room who appeared to be Jotuns were the wild haired, wild eyed boy sitting with the first few he had seen, and another young man with a buzz cut that made his entire head look like snow.

Curiosity got the better of him, for they couldn't possibly all be untrained Jotuns - could they? "Hey. Uh. What's with the others who... who don't have frost lines?" He murmured to Ymir, lowering both head and voice. She paused on her last few bites to stare at him. "They're human. Duh."

Faintly, Marco remembered a few words that had been said when he had still been presumed human, and he stared blankly at her. "From what Reiner said, I thought humans weren't allowed near Utgard."

The only reply he got was in the form of a shrug as the Jotun Queen scratched her nose. "Yeah. If only. We're not supposed to, but it happens."

She rocked forward in her seat, pointing out individuals. "Armin and Mikasa. They came as a package deal with Eren, when he found out that he could turn into a frost giant. They had to make a break for it, and Armin planned the whole thing - he was a smart little fucker, I'll give him that. And Mikasa was a fighter, and already bound to Eren by blood siblinghood. Separating them would lead to nasty consequences, and he was already pretty hateful towards his heritage when he arrived."

Marco remembered the story, vaguely. A boy from the walls who wanted to join the military and eradicate Jotuns - only in some freak accident he had turned into one himself. When they tried to execute him and his "collaborators", he had partially transformed, and while the icy body was melting away, they made their escape. They were now thought of as traitors to the walls - and he was in their midst?

"Then there's Levi and Hanji. Levi is Mikasa's older brother - when she left, he left his position in the Survey Corps to find her. Touching, really. Hanji is half Jotun, too, and has a lot of intuition and information. Nice to keep around, just for that."

Her eyes swept the room, searching until they met with bright blue, and Marco saw her freckled face soften for the first time in a genuine smile. "Then there's Krista. Well, Historia, but she prefers Krista. Krista was the king's daughter, right? She literally just asked me to take her during a raid on the walls. Said she hated her father, and the Wallists. Said Jotuns seemed far fairer. I grew fond of her... pretty quickly."

There seemed much more evident in this story than she told, and he remembered how she had talked earlier of a Krista, who seemed to hold some sway over her. "Then there's Sasha - oh, you can ask her yourself. Oy, potato girl!"

The very hungry girl from before had already started over to the bench, scowling at the name. "That was _once_ ," she groaned, shaking her head and snorting. "Why do you always go for that?"  
"It riles you up," commented Ymir lightly, before dodging a punch. "Whoa, there, Sasha. We've got a new guest. Be nice in front of him, will you?"

Sasha turned to smile at Marco, and he couldn’t help but to smile back. She seemed rather friendly, despite the attempted punch - and if the Jotun Queen didn't seem to mind, he supposed they had to be on good terms. "So you're the new mouth to feed," she began, jokingly, and Marco could hear the slight accent in her words. Beside him, Ymir rolled her eyes. "I swear to the gods, Sasha, if you try and steal his food..."

Sasha faked a hurt expression, batting her eyelids in a display of mock innocence. “Really? You would accuse me of ever trying to steal food from this poor, hungry soul? Nah, I wouldn’t do that.” She reached out, ruffling Marco’s dark hair, and even though they were only so recently introduced, the display of familiarity didn’t make him as uncomfortable as it could have. Rather, he felt totally at home with the affection, as though they had been comrades in battle back when he was in training. “Now, if he _asked_ …”

“Sasha!”

She laughed, lightly, shaking her head until her ponytail swung. “I was _joking_ , Ymir. Still, nice to know who it is that I’m cooking for."

Ymir rolled her eyes, sighing heavily. “Yeah, yeah. Fine. Whatever.”

Sasha seemed pleased with this, somehow, and turned back to Marco. He noticed, now that he looked at her, that she was rather pretty, for a woman - honey eyes, and reddish brown hair, and a rounded face. “Anyway. Formal introduction. The name’s Sasha Braus. Head cook, gardener, hunter, and rare human of Utgard.”

Behind him, Ymir scowled, but Marco decided to pay no attention. “Gardener? You grow food, here?”

Sasha nodded vigorously, grinning. “Yep! Have to put food on the table, somehow. Most of it’s Ymir’s magic, really - I just plant and water ‘em! She’s the one who makes the ground fertile, an’ makes ‘em grow as fast as they do.”

To his surprise, Ymir seemed almost embarrassed by the praise. “Yes, but you’re the one with the green thumb,” she groaned. “And you cook that shit well, too.”  
On his left, Sasha giggled, eyebrow raised. “Whatever you say.”

For a moment, Ymir continued to moan and mope - before something caught her eye, and she rose, slowly, from the table. "Yeah, yeah. All right. Why don't you tell him all about it? I have more important business..."

And then she was gone, and it was just him and Sasha at the table. She smirked at Marco, waggling her eyebrows in the direction Ymir left, for reasons he didn't quite understand. Trying not to think on it, he redirected his thoughts entirely, to something that had plagued him from the start. "So. How did a human end up as the head gardener and cook... all the way up here...?"

Sasha looked positively radiant, and he got the sense it was a tale she had wanted to tell. "Well, ya see, it all begins on one lousy summer..."

\--

Apparently, Sasha had been a farmer and hunter from the walls, as well, until one summer, no game could be caught, and no crops would take in her field. A strange woman appeared in town one day, she told, adding in that she was "rude, and uncouth even for the country." But when Sasha tried selling some pitiful scrap, the woman had done something... odd. "Told me to let her look at my fields. Then at my arrows," she said as she reached for a plate of meat. "Whispered some bullshit, and told me I'd owe her come fall."

What that meant had been lost on her, until suddenly her luck increased. "Catches got bigger," he thought he heard around a mouthful, before she swallowed to say that, "plants started growing."

Even then, with suspected magic, she had never guessed Jotun involvement, and none of the villagers cared as long as their best hunter brought in food. Until it couldn't be ignored any longer.

"It was fall, then. I had just done the harvesting. ...All the plants... they had little frost lines over 'em. And then, when people saw, they looked at my arrows, an' I _swear_ I never noticed but they had frost coatings on the tips as well and - it didn't go well."

Sasha had been brought to the village center, where everyone had begun to clamor for her blood, whether by beating or hanging or - and what was prominent on all minds who knew Jotun magic well - burning.

"If it wasn't for Connie... I'd have died."

Connie Spinger, her best friend, her partner in crime, who had been helping regularly on the farm, tending the crops in her absences on hunting trips, was famous for doing some pretty stupid things. This one took the cake.

"I swore, he had fire in his eyes, and that if one more person laid hands on me, he'd rip them apart. I wasn't ever scared of Connie - not even that night, if I'm honest - but I _was_ scared of what that light meant."

He had announced, loudly, that Sasha should be left alone, and that he was the one to blame. That his parents had been Jotuns who had come to the walls to live a peaceful life, hidden among humans. That as a result, he, too, was a Jotun. And when he saw Sasha in need, he had used magic to help his friend.

It was there that she went quiet, and Marco found that he had to gently prod her as encouragement to continue. "Had he?"

Sasha had directed her gaze at the table, and he only barely saw her head shake. "No," she whispered, as though any louder and she might break, "he was lying. And I knew it - he wasn't lying about being a Jotun, but the magic bit he didn't seem to understand, an' I knew it had something to do with that woman, anyway. Even so, the crowd turned on him for being a Jotun alone, even without magic. I just..." she hesitated again, briefly, looking at him. "I just didn't understand why he'd take credit if he knew he didn't do it. Not 'til I realized that it laid sole blame on him. An' they had already started getting a torch to burn me..."

Marco stared, his eyes wide, curious. "What did you do?"

Sasha stared at him, her eyes meeting his with odd intensity. "What do you think?" She said, voice flat. "I _shot him_."

By 'him', of course, she did not mean Connie. There had been one man holding the torch, and Sasha's quiver of arrows had been brought along with her bow as "evidence". Everyone's attention was on Connie, and it hadn't been hard for her to sneak in, grab one, and use her master hunter skills to shoot the man with the torch through the head. He was dead in an instant, and when the town refocused on her, Connie seemed to once again remember his wrath.

A brief scuffle, a hasty grab for food and other supplies, and they were off, on the run and on foot from the walls. Just like he had, escape was far too easy, but unlike him, they were slightly more prepared.

"Connie... he was a real life saver. Not just back home. You ran off in summer, but we had a much colder season to face. But. He was so warm, and I don't know why I didn't notice before. He'd snuggle up to me, and after a short while his face started getting frosty in places, and I was worried sick until I noticed it was oddly specific. Frost lines an' all that shit. But it meant we could make a fire, he said, as long as he didn't have to touch it much, because he was clearly a Jotun on Jotun territory."

They also had her arrows, and food; she even was able to add a few more, but somehow they still weren't enough. "Closer to winter, closer to running out. We wouldn't survive without food."  
Around that point, she had shot a rabbit with her last arrow, and she was about to retrieve it, hopefully reuse it, when a bird Marco recognized on description alone flew in and took it. "Well I wasn't lettin' that happen! It was my last arrow, and my dinner! I gave chase, and Connie followed."

It was surprisingly short. There was some odd reflection of a place that didn't quite match with the rest of the scenery ahead, an odd sensation of rushing wind, and a sudden huge drop in temperature. Connie barely made it through after her before the portal (for that was what it had been) closed behind them. And they were caught.

"I thought meeting the Jotun Queen would be the end. But. I'm sure you know who it turned out to be."

There sat Ymir on her icy throne, and Sasha recognized her instantly as the woman whose debt she was in for the crops and arrows. And Ymir recognized her, as well, as the girl who owed her a debt. A debt she feared would now involve her life.

"Only, it didn't."

When Connie loudly started threatening her if she dared hurt Sasha for being human, the blond holding him, Reiner, had threatened to kick him. But Ymir laughed it off, and waved her hand. Sasha was fine, she said. "She had been expecting a trade. Free vegetables whenever, I guess. But I brought her another Jotun, and when she asked if I'd like to stay here, garden for them... it was better than I'd ever hoped for. And more than she had, I think. She let Connie stay, too, and I started helping in the kitchen, until they noticed my food was the best and promoted me to head cook."

She broke off to laugh, smiling at him once again. "Sometimes it still feels like I should be in her debt, but as far as she's concerned, that ended when I brought Connie here. Y'know how she's made out all cold and hostile? She's really just. Nice, actually. Warm under all that ice."

Her expression seemed far away, and Marco didn't want to press any further. But there was a new question on his mind now, and he had to ask. "Why did you trust them? I don't mean that I don't, I just... why?"

When her eyes met his again, he saw something warm flicker in them, before fading. "Connie was a Jotun, and I trusted him no matter what," she said, simply. "I don't think I really had a better reason at the time. And the longer I spend here, the more I realize that it was probably good enough. Though, I'm still bound to say that Connie is the best Jotun. Other than Ymir. Don't tell him I added that last bit."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you didn't suspect that Marco was a Jotun I don't know what to say. I don't know why it's a plot twist. It was supposed to be outright said first chapter until I changed my mind on the length of that. Why is it a surprise.  
> I don't count this as a huge spoiler really it was always supposed to be that way.
> 
> Also please appreciate Ymir's reference to "Dancing Queen" that was the best piece of the chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> LITERALLY SCREAMING BECAUSE THIS WAS A FUCKING MONSTROSITY TO TAG OKAY BYE


End file.
